Chinese see health danger in romance

Press, 21 October 1980, Page 27

Chinese see health danger in romance

By

JONATHAN MIRSKY

in London

If the two most celebrated Chinese lovers were alive today, “medical scientists would be likely to persuade them kindly to call a halt to this love affair between two close relatives and teach them some knowledge of eugenics.”

This dreary intelligence is solemnly transmitted in a Chinese report on Peking’s new determination to ensure a higher quality population by the scientific choice of marriage partners. ■

In the draft marriage law presented for approval to the National People’s Congress now meeting in Peking, it is, stipulated that relatives' as close as second cousins will henceforth be forbidden to marry. Such a law would have parted the lovers Bao-yu and Dai-yu in the eighteenth century novel, “The Dream of the Red Chamber.” -

Eugenics — which discourages unions likely to result in children with unfavourable hereditary characteristics — has been under a cloud since Hitler’s enthusiasm for breeding “superior” children. Some Chinese specialists say the resulting neglect of eugenics has led to an increase in hereditary and congenital disease, causing deformed babies and intellectual retardation.

According to the Chinese investigators, the increase in such births arises partly from improvements in living conditions, which mean that more people with defective genes reach childbearing age. China already has regulations to encourage onechild families. Parents are warned that a second child will receive no public support, while the birth of the third will result in financial, housing, and even career penalties. The Chinese ideal of one-child families is expressed in terms which startle Western observers. The goal is. now “that the one and only child bom to a couple is wealthy and intelligent.” Elsewhere the report asserts that the ideal child should be goodlooking as well. Defective children and all the disabled already / bear a powerful stigma in China. Few public benefits exist for such citizens who, if they cannot work, become wholly dependent on their families. The disabled are disqualified from becoming teachers because “they cannot set a good example.” Another obstacle to the Chinese dream of a perfect population is the cus- , tom of cousin marriage, especially among minority nationalities. In far-west-ern Gansu province, for example, investigators of the Academy of Sciences

have found higher rates of congenital deformity and intellectual retardation among these groups. A professor at the Institute of Medical Sciences blames such marriages for the .10 million Chinese suffering from congenital disorders.

Western specialists are less certain of the need to legislate for “better” children. Even cousin marriage, one authority ’indicates, when practised for many generations in countries such as in Saudi Arabia, need not result in unfit children and may produce well-endowed ones;

The ethical question, in the ' West at least, is where to draw the.line between "favourable” and “unfavourable” characteristics, and who does the choosing. The Chinese recognise that Yhe social impact of the new marriage regulations is likely to be considerable. The new draft law therefore contains supplementary articles which take into account “the actual conditions prevailing among the minority nationalities.” A Peking physician reminded a panel at the National People’s Congress that single children will have to shoulder an unprecedented burden ' in a society which expects the young to care for their elderly parents.—O.F.N.S. Copyright.